We’ll never know for sure if Nancy Smash had the president’s blessing, but I wouldn’t be in the slightest surprised if she did.
“In a remarkable rejection of a president they have resolutely backed, House Democrats voted to kill assistance to workers displaced by global trade, a program their party created and has stood by for four decades. By doing so, they brought down legislation granting the president trade promotion authority — the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress — before it could even come to a final vote.”
I suppose extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I unfortunately have no evidence so support my claim. All I can say is that when I’ve said what little I have had to say about this matter, I’ve been consistent in expressing my doubt that the administration sincerely thought they could pass this bill, or even truly wanted to.
I don’t think it’s possible for an American administration to turn its back on free trade as the organizing principle of our foreign policy. We’ve been preaching this to foreign countries since the end of World War Two and we can’t very well say “Never mind” to the whole Pacific Rim. Even hypocrisy has its limits when shame is involved.
So, if this was going to go down, it had to be Congress that did it. And it had to be done in a way that blame could be deflected as strongly as possible away from the president and the administration. No hint that they’ve been acting in bad faith can be allowed.
This isn’t because of domestic politics. It’s because we still want foreign countries to listen to us when we talk. I can’t even imagine an American administration that would have walked away from the TPP talks by saying, “We’re not interested in making free trade agreements with you.”
That was never an option.
Maybe I’m wrong and this really has been exactly what it seems. All I’m saying is that this is what I said would happen. It happened before with Simpson-Bowles, and that didn’t surprise me in the slightest either.
In any case, just consider the possibility that maybe I have been right all along.
